Worcester School Committee absent on student discipline policy

Clive McFarlane Telegram & Gazette Staff @CliveMcFarlane

Friday

Mar 15, 2019 at 6:00 AM

Kelli Bergstrom, mother of two, was enjoying her day off as a nurse at St. Vincent Hospital when she received a call around 1 p.m. Nov. 5 from an administrator at Worcester Technical High School, where her oldest child, Evan, was a student.

“We are doing an emergency removal of your son from school and I need to inform you that you may need legal representation,” Ms. Bergstrom said the administrator told her during the call that triggered nightmarish and life-changing ripples that haunt her family still.

Upon arriving at the school, she learned Evan was among several members of the varsity football team being temporarily removed from school for allegedly hazing a fellow student. That temporary removal was subsequently extended to 90 days for her son, and about seven other members of the team, she said.

“It has cost us,” said Ms. Bergstrom who has subsequently relocated to Florida.

“From spending thousands in lawyers’ fees, selling our home, changing jobs, my son leaving a school with which he was comfortable and thriving, to a future of always having to explain a gap in his education.”

Ms. Bergstrom’s story is yet another example of the ongoing harm being done by a highly punitive zero tolerance Worcester public schools disciplinary policy that seemingly embraces the criminalization of students as a first step; a policy that a Superior Court judge has flagged as potentially lacking due process, at the very least. Her story also reveals yet again how the School Committee has abrogated its responsibility to hold the administration accountable in protecting the rights and well-being of students.

According to the administration, Evan and his football mates were disciplined for hazing, which is certainly unacceptable behavior. But the administration didn’t tell the whole truth, according to Ms. Bergstrom. The public wasn’t told that for the entire year leading up to the suspensions, members of the football team were engaged in “fake fights,” with rules such as no punches to the face, she said.

“I just thought it was boys being boys. There was nothing malicious about the incidents. It was all being done in fun, until" Nov.5.

On that day, according to her, an underclassman who had been participating in the yearlong mini-wrestling matches locked the team out in the rain and taunted them from inside by flashing the finger.

“It was more of a fight that day when the locker room door was finally opened,” she said. “They told him ‘if you are going to lock us out in the rain, we are going to put you in the shower.'”

The mother of the underclassman alerted school officials, after she saw a video of the incident and others previous to it on his phone, Ms. Bergstrom said. And although her son was not involved in the Nov. 5 incident, one of the videos on the young man's phone had him and Evan engaged in what she described as a 20-second “fake fight,” after which they shook hands and went out to practice.

She said the administration made no distinction between the previous videos and the Nov. 5 incident. Her appeal to reduce his 90-day suspension was denied, and her son was assigned to one of the city’s alternative school settings. The program, however, was not a good fit for her son who she said had a 3.84 GPA, was on the honor roll and a member of the National Honor Society. He also had no history of behavioral problems, she said.

After a video surfaced of one of the students at her son’s alternative school playing around with a gun, she decided she couldn’t keep her son in that setting.

“People could say we were not forced to leave Worcester, but I would not allow my son to go back into a school system that turned its back on him. The guidance counselor here in Florida was shocked at the decision of a long-term 90 days suspension for a first offense,” she said.

Hazing is a serious issue, and since the underclassman mentioned by Ms. Bergstrom appeared to have been in the thick of many of these so-called wrestling matches, one can understand the school administration's motivation to act decisively. But while the administration dropped the hammer on these students, I have not seen any evidence (beyond unconfirmed reports that some coaches might have been axed) that it has taken the Worcester Tech principal and assistant principals to task.

How was it possible that these young men were left unsupervised for some 45 minutes at a time all year long after football practices?

At the cost of thousands of dollars, the hazing and assault and battery charges against Evan were continued without findings for six months, but what about the other students charged? Did they have the resources to fight those charges? What about Evan's classmates consigned to an inferior academic setting for 90 days.

I reached out to Superintendent Maureen Binienda over the past couple of days to get some answers, and was told Thursday that she was out of town. Perhaps she will run into the School Committee, because it has been out of town on these issues for a long, long time.

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